Remember all that Year of the Woman rhetoric when liberal feminists were riding high?

Top Democrat women loudmouths in Washington would rather you forgot all of it now. If you ever wondered how to get one of them to clam up about gender and politics, now you know:

Pursed lips. Frosty glares. Polite demurrals. Icy silence. Women in politics are grappling with the distinctly unfunny choice of restraining themselves or letting rip what they really think about Rep. Anthony Weiner’s X-rated online conduct and whether he belongs in Congress. They’ll be vexed by the question awhile longer because the 46-year-old Democrat from New York City told the New York Post on Thursday he won’t resign.

The scandal presents a maddening choice for these female leaders, none shy, between speaking out or keeping quiet about behavior that, at best, is disrespectful of women. “You’re right, I don’t like” questions about Weiner, Sen. Dianne Feinstein said with a smile.

Does she think Weiner should resign? “I’m not getting into that,” she demurred.

…House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California, the first woman to serve as House speaker, said in a statement that she’s “disappointed” in Weiner and called for an ethics committee investigation. Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the new chief of the Democratic National Committee has said nothing, but concurs with Pelosi, a spokesman said.

Tommy Christopher: How do you view Rep. Weiner’s actions, in context with other sex scandals involving the likes of Sens. David Vitter and John Ensign?

Kirsten Powers: What I find distinctive about what happened with Anthony is that it wasn’t an affair, it wasn’t, you know, a one-time event, it was predatory behavior. And it was behavior that was done in his official capacity. He wasn’t doing this as an anonymous person. He was doing this where you have people who saw him on TV or thought he was a good Congressman or whatever going to him and saying, “Oh, you’re such a great fighter for Democrats, Congressman Weiner.” And then he was using that position to, sort of, being predatory on the internet and I can’t remember which woman said it. She said, “I just want to talk politics,” and then it started getting creepy. So he’s using his official division, he’s not doing this, as much as he wants to say it’s in a private capacity, I highly doubt these women would have been talking to him if he wasn’t a Congressman.

The sending the picture to the girl, to me it’s like sexual harassment. He’s a Congressman, she’s a student. He has tons of power. She looks up to him.

I can tell you as a woman who has received very inappropriate things from people who have more power than me, it’s very intimidating. And you often don’t even tell anybody because you’re so frightened of what this person could potentially do to you. And so, there’s a kind of harassment predatory aspect to this.

Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin told The Daily Caller Weiner’s “long history” of “skirt-chasing” raises more questions about the New York Democrat’s Capitol Hill sexual secrets and expects more women with similar stories to come forward.

“Stories about his hot pursuits of young Capitol Hill interns date back to 2001,” Malkin said in an email. “At least one young woman told liberal Vanity Fair magazine that Weiner hunted down her e-mail address, bragged about riding on Air Force One, and extended an invitation to visit his office in person. The photo gallery of his select group of young female followers/followees on Twitter suggests a continued hunt.”

…Malkin worries about the young female staffers and interns in Weiner’s office and in nearby offices. It’s a possibility they could feel threatened or pressured by Weiner’s advances.

“The latest buzz from D.C. Democrats is that other pictures of Weiner’s package are out there. This raises troubling questions about who the recipients might have been, how old, and whether they worked for or under the congressman (NO pun intended!). The Beltway is packed with young women dazzled by the attention of older men,” Malkin said. “As I observed after my own internship stint nearly two decades ago, some of the most dangerous lechers and creeps are not the drunks wearing rags on the street, but ‘respectable’ men wearing pinstripes and wedding rings who lurk in the halls of power.”

Self-respecting women of all political stripes should agree: Predatory misogynists have no business pretending to represent the best interests of wives, moms, and daughters in Washington. Period.

Now, there is new evidence to suggest that Congressman Weiner had intimate conversations with an underaged girl. For privacy reasons, I called this girl “Ethel” in a previous post. She is someone who argued with another underaged girl about having a crush on Weiner — shortly after posting messages such as “SERIOUSLY LOVING LIFE AGAIN BUT I GOTTA KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT OR ELSE…” followed by “I’m in love with married men, #thatswhyimsingle.”

There is plenty of evidence (as we will detail in future installments) that Congressman Weiner was Ethel’s favorite Congressman. In this post, this blog will not link the Web address that shows Ethel, together with her Tumblr posts showing her talking about Congressman Weiner. But here is a screenshot from the cache of that now deleted Tumblr account…

Ethel declares her happiness, and says: “SERIOUSLY LOVING LIFE AGAIN BUT I GOTTA KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT OR ELSE……….” She has learned that openly declaring her love for Weiner by name got her unfollowed before, but she won’t make that mistake again. She’ll just come really, really close.

When another admirer (whom we have called Betty) asks Weiner to her prom, Ethel mocks Betty for openly declaring her love for a married politician. Weiner ends up unfollowing Betty, which upsets Betty greatly.

Ironically, Ethel continues to write things like “I love married men” . . . but does not name Weiner by name as she did before. Instead, she proceeds in what she evidently thought was a more subtle manner, writing “my one true love” while linking a video of Weiner. Ethel continues to talk about how she loves married men, in tweets interspersed with others praising Weiner.

On May 23, she tweets the obscene tweet about about 69ing and using honey mustard as a lube . . . adding: “Ohh yeahh baby I love bdh weiner.” (bdh likely means big damn hero.)

Three days later, Ethel is quoting Weiner talking about “cape and tights shit” — a quote that does not appear to be anything he ever said publicly, according to Google. The conclusion is irresistable that she is quoting a private message he had sent to her.

As I explained this morning, “tights and cape shit” is the same kind of talk Congressman Weiner used with Lisa Weiss:

With Lisa Weiss, the talk eventually turned very explicit. With Ethel? We don’t know. At this point, we just have to make an educated guess about how they would talk in private, based upon things they said (or repeated!) in public.

Police on Friday afternoon came to the home of a 17-year-old high school junior to ask her about direct online communications she has had with Rep. Anthony Weiner.

Two officers from the New Castle County Police Department arrived at the girl’s home around 4:30 p.m. and asked to speak with the girl’s mother about the daughter’s contact with Weiner. Another officer appeared at the home a short time later. A FoxNews.com reporter was at the home when the police arrived.

The girl, whose name is being withheld because she is a minor, told FoxNews.com, “I’m doing OK.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office was notified in October by then-Rep. Eric Massa’s top aide of concerns about the New York Democrat’s behavior, two congressional sources familiar with the matter said Wednesday night.

Joe Racalto, Massa’s chief of staff, was uneasy that Massa, 50, was living with several young, unmarried male staffers and using sexually explicit language with them, one source said. But what finally prompted him to call Pelosi’s director of member services, the source said, was a lunch date that Massa made with a congressional aide in his 20s who worked in the office of Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.).

According to a person briefed on the call, Racalto was concerned that the lunch followed a pattern by Massa — who is married and has two children — of trying to spend time alone with young gay men with no ostensible work purpose. Racalto, according to this person, also alerted Frank’s chief of staff. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the matter.

Massa resigned from the House on Monday amid questions about his conduct.

Neither Racalto nor anyone from Pelosi’s office responded immediately to requests for comment Wednesday night. Massa could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

The revelation about warnings to Pelosi’s office comes as the House ethics committee closed its short-lived investigation of allegations that Massa groped and sexually harassed several young, male staffers in his office, according to two sources familiar with the decision.

The committee concluded that Massa’s resignation put him outside the reach of any punishment it could impose and would render any findings irrelevant.

***

Update: Weiner confirms what Patterico pieced together over the past several days: He did, indeed, trade several private direct messages on Twitter with the 17-year-old high school junior. The New York Times whitewashes the sexually-charged thoughts posted on the girl’s Tumblr social media account and reported at Patterico.

Weiner’s poor media flack tries to handle the story:

Representative Anthony D. Weiner said on Friday that he exchanged at least five private messages on Twitter this spring with a 17-year-old Delaware girl who became an admirer of his after hearing him speak during a high school trip to Washington.

Mr. Weiner’s spokeswoman, Risa Heller, did not provide copies of the messages, but said they were not inappropriate.